CINEMISSES! District 9

In this episode, Matt and Tug crash land on the movie, "District 9," exploring its allegory for apartheid, character development, and the unique narrative style of found footage. They discuss Neil Blomkamp's background and the film's production challenges, as well as its unexpected success and cultural commentary on humanity's treatment of those considered to be "other." They discuss the significance of the alien fluid (Insert collective eyeroll here), the transformation of the protagonist Vickus, and the moral implications of the actions taken by the MNU. The conversation also touches on the film's commentary on media manipulation, body horror, and other societal issues, drawing parallels to real-world events. So grab the alien fluid, take a sip and let's see what happens.

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Transcript

Tug McTighe (00:05)
You're listening to Cinemissas, a podcast about movies that one or the other of your two hosts just never got around to seeing. I'm Tug reminding you that anybody can make a podcast about movies they have seen. We are here because we haven't. Thanks for joining us on Cinemissas and action. Action. Hi buddy. How are you?

Matt Loehrer (00:13)
I'm Matt.

Action!

I'm good. It's been a whirlwind of a weekend. got I had a little procedure on Friday that went fine. ⁓ Nothing to worry about. All dozen of our listeners. I'm fine. But my daughter, yeah, my daughter also had her. She blew out her knee playing volleyball, so she had the whole McGill. The the meniscus and the ACL and the other ACL or the MCL or.

Tug McTighe (00:35)
Yes. Yes. Good. Good. If you're worried.

God, you told me. The full ACL reconstruction, all that? Yeah. Gosh darn it.

Matt Loehrer (00:56)
So she's recovering, kid. But that said, everything's good. Life's good.

Tug McTighe (01:02)
Good. yeah, so with your procedure and the volleyball ACL injury, that can be stressful. And do you ever have bad dreams when you're stressed out that your teeth are falling out? Or yeah, OK, right.

Matt Loehrer (01:17)
yeah, 100%. I've had that where

you're in the you're looking in the mirror. And there's you know, you like pick at it and then they just start falling out. Yeah, it's terrifying.

Tug McTighe (01:23)
huh. Yeah. Yeah,

it's horrible. it's similar to the one that I've learned. Everybody has the same kind of weird dreams and I did some research about it's just about you feel like you're out of control in your life. Like nothing's in your control. And it's the same as that one where you, ⁓ wake up one morning and you realize you didn't go to class the whole semester and you don't even know where the classroom is and you never bought the books, but you gotta go take the final. And then you're yeah. And then you're

Matt Loehrer (01:48)
Right, like your books are still in plastic with a

receipt on them.

Tug McTighe (01:52)
You're running across campus and you never get there. You don't know where you're right. You don't know where you're going. I also, you'll laugh. I have one, right? I somehow I have some sports eligibility left in the NCAA and the coach is like, Hey, tug, we need you, but I can't find my cleats. And I don't, you know, it's all, it's just so it's the same thing. But the reason I asked about this teeth falling out. and I did learn that it's a very common dream trope is that,

The movie we're talking about today is District 9, which I had forgotten when I saw it in 2009. I haven't seen it since then. I'd forgotten. There's quite a bit of body horror in this of he's metamorphosis, facising into something else. He's transforming pieces of him are falling off and taking shape. And this movie, as we'll talk about, has a lot of shit in it. Like, I don't mean shit like, but I mean body horror.

robot exoskeleton fighting multi-national corporations like Wayland from aliens or OCP from RoboCop that are just evil vile corporations. 100 % and just I just had forgotten that one of those things was was this just terrible transformation that Vicus goes through the course of the movie. So yeah, so

Matt Loehrer (03:04)
You can definitely see the influences for sure.

For what it's worth,

I've had the dream. I had the late for class, never gone to class and you're late for the final and in my underwear in the same dream. I'm like as if things weren't bad enough now and I also have no pants.

Tug McTighe (03:26)
and in your underpants. Great.

Yeah, now you don't have any pants either. Sounds fantastic. Okay, so we spilled the beans. It's District 9. You had not seen this film. And so I will ask the question that we always ask of the cinema, sir. What did you think you know about this movie before you saw it?

Matt Loehrer (03:46)
Okay, so I had to draw on my, at this point, 15, 16 year old memories of.

this movie and I didn't know a lot about it, but what I think I remember, think was pretty, much correct. I thought it was a sci-fi movie, a little heavier than your average action sci-fi shoot them up a little, a little more philosophically heavy, right? More high art than you might expect from the shot.

I thought it took place on Earth and specifically South Africa. And I think this because I mentally associate it with apartheid. ⁓ I was right. ⁓ I knew it was somehow connected to Peter Jackson, though I didn't think he directed it. So I wasn't sure what the connection was. I remember from the trailers, it didn't seem polished. It seemed very gritty. It seemed very real. ⁓

Tug McTighe (04:24)
Well, that's good, because you're right. Yeah.

Yeah, the

found footage, the newscasting, video cameras, or not video cameras, but surveillance cameras, all kinds of different footage feeds.

Matt Loehrer (04:51)
Right, and contemporary stuff, not technology from our future, like technology that we exist with right now. plot-wise, I remember thinking the main character was somehow transformed in some way. It is rare for me to think of a movie and have no idea who's in it, but I couldn't have told you a single person that was

Tug McTighe (05:08)
⁓ 100%. Well, yeah, you're right on a lot of it. So yeah, again, this was a big movie, which we'll talk about here in a second that kind of came out of nowhere. Peter Jackson he had come off the Lord of the Rings trilogy and he was flying pretty high and he produced this, this film and this is Neil Bloomcamp and Charley, Charito, I've heard Charito or Charle Toe, Copley. They were high school. They met after high school.

They were working together and, cop, cop, we allowed bloom camp to use computers as a production company to help his, they were trying to pitch projects cause he was a filmmaker and copy. Wasn't an actor, right? He was a, a, just a producer. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (05:44)
Producer. Yeah, we'll talk more about that later. But

yeah, I think they went to the same high school, but not at the same time.

Tug McTighe (05:49)
Right, so there's just this sort of friendship thing and they worked on a short film together and then, yeah, Peter Jackson could write it, you know, get anything made at that point. And so he made District 9 with these guys and the title obviously is District 9. The log line is 30 years ago, aliens arrive on Earth not to conquer or give aid, but to find refuge from their dying planet. Separated from humans in the South African area called District 9, the aliens are managed by Multinational United,

which is unconcerned with the aliens well from what will do anything to master their advanced technology. When a company field agency contacts a mysterious virus that begins to alter his DNA, there's only one place he can hide district nine.

Matt Loehrer (06:26)
I was right about the altering his DNA part. ⁓ Though I have some questions about that, so we'll talk about it. Okay.

Tug McTighe (06:28)
Yes, you were. You were. I have a few questions myself. I'd like to

to ponder again, District nine, 2009 science fiction film, Neil Bloom camp directed in his feature film debut. He was a special effects guy, which is why this movie for its budget has beautifully rendered special effects and lots of kickass design. He he wrote it with Terry Tatchell, Peter Jackson, again produced.

Matt Loehrer (06:49)
Yeah, really impressive.

Tug McTighe (06:58)
New Zealand, United States, South Africa's Charlie to Copley, Jason Cope, David James. And it was like I said, it was adapted from his earlier film alive in Joburg, which featured some of these storylines. I don't think it's exactly this, but similar characters and similar similar scenes. So yeah, you mentioned it's partially presented or mostly presented really in a found footage kind of format with interviews with

scholars of this event that we're going to get into newscasts people who have studied this this this phenomena of these aliens coming to earth and becoming stranded here and just a lot of camera techniques to give you story right without having the actors speak the dialogue it's it's an interesting technique i think it works mostly sometimes it takes you a little bit out of the out of the narrative but what did you think of all that

Matt Loehrer (07:48)
Yeah, I think we've gotten

we've gotten so accustomed to and I think they were kind of they were a little bit ahead of it. But we've gotten so accustomed to that found footage, mockumentary documentary format. I mean, it's the office, you know, it's Blair Witch Project. so I do feel like and it's no fault of theirs, but I feel like that takes you out of it, maybe dates it a little bit because then that that

Tug McTighe (08:03)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Loehrer (08:15)
not a trope, but that motif was used so.

Tug McTighe (08:18)
Yeah, it kept coming in and it kept coming back and kept coming back throughout the film. I think it works. Again, it works pretty well. To your point, man, everybody's using it now. Spoiler alert, everybody. This will be an actually non-spoiler. I saw Fantastic Four last weekend and it opens on a news on like they're being introduced on a talk show.

Yeah. So it begins in this TV show host says these four brave astronauts were exposed to cosmic rays, which gave them amazing powers. And then it, and then it goes through like a newsreel of their exploits And so it does the same kind of thing. So I think we're used to it now, but again, like your point, think of this was a little bit, a little bit early on that trend.

Matt Loehrer (08:58)
Right.

I think so. So at the time, I imagined it was pretty fresh, actually. People are like, wow, what a way.

Tug McTighe (09:03)
So yeah, yeah, well, and if right, remember

when I mean, I distinctly remember when Blair Witch came out and that blew everybody's minds. they marketed it like it was real. And then again, there was a viral marketing campaign for this at San Diego Comic Con theatrical trailer in 2009 world premiere in July 23rd, 2009 at San Diego Comic Con. This is going to blow us both away made 210 million bucks.

Matt Loehrer (09:29)
That's crazy.

Tug McTighe (09:29)
on a ⁓ 30

million dollar budget. So that campaign really, really fucking worked. ⁓

Matt Loehrer (09:36)
And to your point,

it looked, those effects were for 30 mil, were pretty great.

Tug McTighe (09:41)
100%.

This is a $300 million production now today, right? One of these big giant movies. Um, it received a claim from critics and garnered lots of awards and nominations, including four Academy Award nominations for best picture, best adaptive screenplay, best visual effects and best film editing. Um, yeah, like a gigantic success. Interesting story differently. You know, I talk about this a lot because I can assume, I mean, as I'm sitting here in a Harry Potter t-shirt in front of a star Wars backdrop, I consume a lot of this.

Matt Loehrer (09:44)
Yeah, absolutely.

Tug McTighe (10:09)
sci-fi and fantasy. And I've told you a million times, I'll read a sci-fi or a fantasy book filled with tropes that I'm used to as long as there's an interesting wrinkle to the world that it's in or the characterization is slightly different. It's like, we got to go take the thing. We got to find the thing and take the thing to the place. I don't care. So this is a lot of tropes stuck together.

But I think it works because it is very clearly a direct allegory about apartheid.

Matt Loehrer (10:46)
Yes, it is not subtle at all.

Tug McTighe (10:48)
It is not subtle.

Matt Loehrer (10:52)
Okay, so we like to talk about directors. So we'll talk about Neil Blomkamp. In the late 90s, he started working as a visual effects artist and 3D animator. And I think a lot of the designs too of the ship, probably the aliens, I think he had a lot to do with that too. I just have a few.

Tug McTighe (11:08)
100%. I don't know. I didn't go look at the credits, but I know, yeah, he was making drawings. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (11:14)
Yeah, his fingerprints are on that.

Animation credits include Stargate SG-1 in 98, First Wave, which I don't know what that is in 98, and Mercy Point that same year. I don't know what that is either. ⁓ Aftershock Earthquake in New York, 99. And in 2000, he garnered his first role as lead animator for the Dark Angel TV series, which I do remember. And I think it was too. He was the lead 3D animator for 3000 Miles to Graceland in 2001.

Tug McTighe (11:35)
You too, think that was a James Cameron was connected to that somehow.

Matt Loehrer (11:43)
And in 2003, he was hired to illustrate photorealistic future aircraft for Popular Science's Next Century in aviation. there you

Tug McTighe (11:51)
Yeah, so right, so this is not outside of his skill set, what we're talking about.

Matt Loehrer (11:56)
Right.

So primarily an illustrator, designer, concept or creator, which is pretty cool. He illustrated the future of the automobile in 2004. He worked as a visual effects artist at the Embassy Visual Effects in Vancouver, as well as Rainmaker Digital Effects. It was signed by Toronto Commercial House Spy Films. In 2007, to promote the release of Halo 3, he directed a trilogy of live action short films set in the Halo universe, known collectively as Land

Tug McTighe (12:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (12:27)
And Halo was something that he and Peter Jackson, we probably get to that.

Tug McTighe (12:29)
He and Peter Jackson were trying

to make some kind of film series, I think.

Matt Loehrer (12:34)
Yeah, and it just, he said the script just never got up.

Tug McTighe (12:38)
Never

couldn't get it. Couldn't get it right. Well, the guy's name is Master Chief, which seems annoying. The main character. Sorry, Halo lovers. Don't come at us. Yeah, Master Chef is a whole different thing.

Matt Loehrer (12:44)
A little bit. He. I thought his master chef. think. That is

a different show. So, yes, that was going to be his first feature length film to direct was an adaptation like a full feature film of the Halo video games. And Peter Jackson was going to produce. So that's how they got connected. He saw a reel of his commercial work in his shorts and Jackson thought it was great.

ones that got him noticed included a faux advertisement for a third world police robot that established his kind of signature style of lo-fi gritty production meets CGI. So it really looks real. He did a live in Joberg. ⁓

Tug McTighe (13:26)
Yeah,

that was the precursor to this.

Matt Loehrer (13:29)
Right. Tempbot, which was an office space as kind of a spoof and Yellow, which was a short film based on the color yellow for Adidas's campaign, which had a globe trotting Android gone rogue. So he's he's infusing science fiction and his design and all these cool elements into these very different kind of campaigns. ⁓

Tug McTighe (13:38)
Okay, so he's sniffing around.

His, that's right.

Right, so he's

sniffing around our world, right? Making commercials, making brand stuff. So I think that's really cool. I like when people from that marketing advertising world can move into feature films and bigger productions like that. I think that's cool.

Matt Loehrer (14:03)
Yeah,

and I'm really weird and interesting mishmash of projects. I think it's interesting when creative people and I think a lot of times creative people fall into one or two, one of two camps, which is a, they do one thing and do it really well. And you know, people like this, ⁓ like Wes Anderson ⁓ from our previous episode, or they do a lot of different things, but they always have this unique perspective or signature feel.

Tug McTighe (14:18)
Yes, Wes Anderson. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (14:29)
and they leave an imprint on their projects, which I think he does. I am always glad when creative people are given a chance to try something. Like you haven't done this exact thing, but I've seen what you can do and I have faith in you. You have actually spun the wheel on me in the past, which I appreciated. ⁓ So I think that's great. If there's a little risk giving someone a chance, but I always like it when creative people get a chance to try.

Tug McTighe (14:36)
Mm-hmm.

Right? Right?

Yeah, and it's like,

how do you then how do you get the experience if you don't like, right? Like, go try the thing. You did these other 10 projects. Maybe this isn't exactly the same, but You do the same kind of process, right? You follow the same kind of rules to get to these places. So well, cool. I like that. I like that. I like it, too. I just like, you know, man, we like creative people. We like people that.

go out and have an idea in their brain. we talked about this last time with Wes. The world is littered with people that have a vision that can't get it out. That it just something breaks down in the black box of their brain that they can see it in their head, but they can't get it on paper or on screen or wherever. But it feels like this is pretty well realized what he was trying to do. He's made several other films, District Nine in 2009.

Matt Loehrer (15:36)
I agree.

Tug McTighe (15:40)
Elysium in 2013, which I think had Matt Damon in it. I didn't see that one. I've seen some of Chappie 2015, but there's again another robot and Elysium had these exoskeleton suits. So again, to your point, he's he's bringing in his his shit to whatever he's working on. Yeah. And he's he wrote all these movies to why he wrote everything Chappie demonic, which I've never even heard of. And then Gran Turismo, which is a video game racing video game, which

Matt Loehrer (15:56)
He's got a toolbox with a couple things that you're going to see every time.

Tug McTighe (16:07)
He directed did not write. I'm not going to see that one. So.

Matt Loehrer (16:11)
Yeah, are you familiar with Catch 22, the Joseph Heller book? ⁓ As as I as far as I know, that was his debut book, and he kind of, you know, knocked it out of the park with that and was never able to duplicate it. And he also kind of had the same schtick in. had a book called Good as a Gold that kind of had the same idea. And I'm like, he's like going back to the well. So, yeah, I don't

Tug McTighe (16:14)
⁓ Yeah.

Could never be captured. Yeah.

Basically the same.

Yeah, I-

Matt Loehrer (16:40)
I think Blomkamp had the same kind of problem. He did so well on this first one and he could subsequent movies just couldn't live up to it.

Tug McTighe (16:47)
This is exactly what happened to Night Shyamalan, where Sixth Sense came out and it was a grand slam home run with a twist at the end. And he's like, fuck, now I'm the twist ending guy. Right. And that's hard to do. So, OK, can we talk a little bit about the Halo video game with Peter Jackson? never got off the ground. he went back to Bloom Camp.

Matt Loehrer (16:59)
Right, but he sure did every time. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (17:13)
went back to the world that he had explored with his writer partner Terry Tatchell in that alive at Joburg thing. They picked some characters and moments and concepts that they thought were interesting, including this documentary style look and feel alien in mech suits, that sort of thing. then again, clearly, like we talked about, wanted to talk about apartheid in some way. So yeah, I thought that was a super

super interesting career that this guy's had. know, it doesn't look like he's made a movie in a while, but he'd probably banging out special effects projects, you know, behind the scenes.

All right. So film was shot on location in South Africa, in and around Johannesburg during a time of violent unrest, between native South Africans and Africans born in other countries. So.

Sort of exactly what we're talking about in the film, right? Again, it puts portrays district 9 as it impoverished neighborhood where people are being forced to live people aliens are being forced to live and then they're going to shut this shanty town down and move these forcibly movies these prawns as they're known which we'll get into later to this tent sort of a tent city, so it it it looks like a wasteland purposefully it is a slum

He wanted to capture the bleak atmosphere and environment. He shot it in 60 days, which I feel like is fast.

December, it rained too much. They shot some in the summer. It was hot. So there's just a lot of shit went on in the making of this, but he wanted it to be desolate and dark and dirty and dusty and just a really, really shitty living conditions for these aliens.

Matt Loehrer (18:52)
Yeah, mission accomplished, because this did not look like a place I would ever want to go dirty, dusty, gritty.

Tug McTighe (18:57)
No, filthy, right? And dangerous, which, you know, there's all kinds of starving aliens running around. There's gangs and they, you know, you go to interview, like, when you have a shanty town, crime follows. And right, there are these crime lords. So again, you know, he has all kinds of weapons, all kinds of machines. MNU is a very powerful corporation that has a militaristic bent to it.

And a little bit like Star Wars, when Lucas said he wanted it to feel lived in ships are rusty, they're beat up. He, that's what, what a boom camp wanted here. He said, I don't know whether the film has the feeling or not for the audience, but I wanted to have that harsh eighties kind of vibe. didn't want it to feel glossy and slick.

Matt Loehrer (19:44)
Yeah, mission accomplished again. was very gritty, not slick and obvious callbacks and homages to RoboCop and Alien down to the exoskeleton and the third act, we'll talk about. But I am, as I told you, I'm a sucker for exo mechanic, mechanical robotic death dealing exoskeletons in a movie. Keep it coming. Right.

Tug McTighe (19:45)
Yeah.

Yep.

sucker for a mech suit.

they're pretty neat. ⁓

And again, like we said, it basically expanded version of his 2005 film, Alive in Joberg. It narrates the conflict between the aliens and local residents of Johannesburg. Charlie Toe Copley was in that as well. He became the lead actor in this after that. And he was not an actor.

Matt Loehrer (20:21)
No, he had a bit role in that short. I think he's uncredited as Sniper. ⁓ I guess he's not really uncredited, but he's mostly uncredited. He doesn't have a name. So he brought him back for this movie. But yeah, he was South Africa's youngest ever TV producer at age 25. He, I think the government was handing out a very small number of licenses and he got one of them to produce content.

Tug McTighe (20:26)
Okay.

Okay. Okay.

Okay.

Matt Loehrer (20:46)
So that's where, as you mentioned earlier, that's where he met Blomkamp, who was a teenager at the time and an intern for his production company.

Tug McTighe (20:52)
first production company. It's I love how creative partnerships are formed. All right. So the tomato meter 90 % on 310 reviews and the popcorn meter 82 % on 250,000 plus ratings. So the critics like this map and the people liked it too, but the critics really liked it. And again, $30 million budget reportedly and according to box office mojo, it earned about 210 million worldwide. So

Matt Loehrer (20:56)
Yeah, kind of.

Tug McTighe (21:21)
gigantic hit by anybody's accounting.

Matt Loehrer (21:23)
Yes, a sci-fi allegory for apartheid starring nobody. I would call that a pretty big hit. Right? Who's in it? Nobody.

Tug McTighe (21:28)
Green light, green light it right away. All right.

So, right. So that being said, we're not gonna, we're not gonna belabor the casting too much. We've got a couple of notes here, right? Charito Copley is Vickus Van Damerwa, which are these, some of these names are tough to say. He is a sort of bumbling bureaucrat at MNU Department of Alien Affairs, which I just love the name. And he, he becomes

⁓ the leader of this forcible relocation of all these aliens and he's he's he's ⁓ the son-in-law of like the president of MNU

Matt Loehrer (22:06)
Right. Which makes sense. I'd forgotten about that. I'm like, how did he land that job in that good looking wife? And I'm like, ⁓ that's it.

Tug McTighe (22:10)
Yeah, Tonya is his right is his right.

Um, and yes, he, uh, of interest to probably no one. He was, uh, howling mad Murdoch in the 2010 reboot of eight, the 18, which I did not see.

Matt Loehrer (22:24)
You

And I also did not see and do not plan to see. Was that Liam Neeson as as Hannibal? Maybe I do want to see it. I feel like I should. my gosh.

Tug McTighe (22:29)
Let's not watch that. so as Hannibal, yep. Bradley Cooper's face, Bradley, Bradley Cooper's face. ⁓

Jason cope is Christopher Johnson, who, ⁓ was the district nine prawn who helps Vickus fight MNU. David James was Kubis Venter. Who's a total douche and aggressives aggressive, sadistic and xenophobic mercenary soldier sent to capture Vickus.

Vanessa Hall Heywood was Tanya Smith, Vandermoorwa. That's hard to say. She's very pretty.

Matt Loehrer (23:04)
Yeah, she was way out of his league and I can say this as a guy whose wife is way out of his league. So game recognized game.

Tug McTighe (23:08)
Right? She liked him game

recognizes game. And then there's just a lot of other people that you've never heard of and don't don't much matter. Because

Matt Loehrer (23:20)
Do want to take a

attempt at Oba Sanjo's actor's name?

Tug McTighe (23:23)
Yeah,

yeah, let's try that. Okay.

Eugene Wanangwa Kumbaniyaiwa

Matt Loehrer (23:30)
good so far.

Okay.

It's as good as I think you're gonna get.

Tug McTighe (23:39)
He's the he was the the crime lord the nigerian crime lord

Matt Loehrer (23:43)
Yes, he was paralyzed and a quadriplegic, paraplegic, paraplegic gang leader. And he believed that eating alien body parts would give him superpowers, the ability to use their weapons. So unsurprisingly, the Nigerian government was not happy about that. And at the idea that Nigerians are the kind of people who would eat other people. this movie is banned in Nigeria.

Tug McTighe (23:49)
Para, the Hatties Harps.

Give him their, yes. Yeah.

Yeah, this is this was a bit of a tone break for me. I didn't really like either that they named him as Nigerians when they very easily could have just been. There's a there's a gigantic crime lord. In this. Slum District 9, trying to get aliens, trying to get weapons, all this. So, yeah, it was it was weird that just it did stick out at me, actually.

Matt Loehrer (24:33)
feel like it contradicts the message of the movie. If the message is the way we make assumptions and mistreat people that are unlike us to take someone who's ostensibly unlike most of the viewing audience and have us leave with... So do Nigerians eat people? Of course they don't, but why would you even say that?

Tug McTighe (24:40)
That's right.

Right. mean, you're right. You're right. You're you're

you're my friend, Dr. Emilio John, who's a soccer coach from Nigeria, has been in the US for 40 years. He sits down to watch it and is like, those fucking Nigerians. And he's like, what? What did we do? He's a frickin PS. He's a fucking doctor. So anyway. All right. So let's yeah. Like you said when we were talking there, there are an awful lot of people in this movie for us to not know any of them.

Matt Loehrer (25:04)
What did we do to deserve this?

That was a strange choice.

Tug McTighe (25:18)
Our first Sin of Mrs. was out that guy, unfortunately. ⁓

Matt Loehrer (25:18)
Right?

Yeah,

there's no that guy. There was one American, William Allen Young as Jerk Michaels, the CEO of MNU. He was the only American in the movie and I don't know what else he's been in.

Tug McTighe (25:28)
as Dirk

Michael's great name.

Matt Loehrer (25:32)
that so.

Tug McTighe (25:32)
sure.

So now that we've got the production notes well covered, Matthew, let's jump into the plot as I think it's a pretty interesting one. In 82, an enormous extraterrestrial spaceship arrives and hovers over the South African city of Johannesburg. Yeah, really cool. Really big. And it was...

Matt Loehrer (25:48)
was a great looking ship. I loved it.

Yes. And you got a sense of the scale. Like you were

introduced to it through like news footage.

Tug McTighe (25:58)
You could.

Yeah, you saw helicopters flying around and taking pictures of it and it just stops and it's, I don't know, several hundred feet in the air, but it's just hovering there. And that was in 80. Independence Day, you saw this. Yeah. Yeah. It looked more real. And again, it was gritty and it so it was far away so you could tell it was a ship. You couldn't make out the details, but yeah, just just really well done. So so nothing happens. They don't know. So they fly up there.

Matt Loehrer (26:05)
And you've seen this in other movies. You've seen it in ⁓ Independence days, but this was better. This was more real by far than Independence Day.

Tug McTighe (26:24)
And they cut into the ship and they find a million malnourished, these insects like aliens. And then that they're all sort of just really in bad health. And they bring them down and reload. They relocate them to a camp that becomes district nine. And then over the next 30 years or 20 years or however many it is, district nine becomes a slum. Right. And locals come to view the aliens derogatorily.

They refer to them as prawns because they sort of have a shrimp face, some tentacles. But they're racist against the aliens, believing them to be filthy, violent animals who just are taking resources away from humans. So does that sound familiar? Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (27:09)
Yeah, there's actually I have a little background on the whole. Yes. ⁓ Yeah,

right. I have actually a little background on the whole prawn naming. So they're kind of, as you said, kind of an insect like kind of shrimp or lobster like kind of a mix. There is a species of reddish brown king cricket native to South Africa called the Parktown Prawn. ⁓ Parktown being a suburb of Johannesburg. ⁓

Tug McTighe (27:30)
Okay?

You had me at Parktown

Prawn by the way.

Matt Loehrer (27:36)
⁓ I believe they were discovered or first noted in 1899. ⁓ But in the for reasons unknown in the 1960s, they began to grow in size rapidly to the point that now they're like three inches long. It's a imagine a red reddish cricket this big. They can jump a meter in the air. ⁓ Gardner's kind of like them because they're

Tug McTighe (27:42)
Okay?

So they're big.

Haha!

Matt Loehrer (28:04)
natural way to keep slugs and snails and things. But get this, they also eat, they will eat pet food. ⁓ They will eat carcasses of birds, they will eat dog shit, they will eat anything. And when they're when they are threatened, they eject a black fecal liquid. So I, yeah, it's horrifying. And the fact that I mean, this, like, if you said this was Australia, I'd be like, yeah, that makes sense. But

Tug McTighe (28:05)
They're eating, yeah, they're eating other insects and stuff.

Okay?

Okay?

Okay, this is horrifying.

Yeah, right. This

happens every day in Australia.

Matt Loehrer (28:33)
Geez, this

is terrible. So I think a lot of those elements, I think that's where the name came from, the whole prominent.

Tug McTighe (28:40)
100 %

and I really again, I've said this. I really appreciate your research skills and I never want to know where you get this information.

Matt Loehrer (28:49)
You

Tug McTighe (28:50)
Okay. So there's a lot of unrest between the locals and the aliens. so the government hires MNU, multinational United, very cleverly named a large defense contractor to relocate the aliens to a new camp outside the city. Piet Smith, MNU executive appoints his son-in-law and MNU bureaucrat, Vickus Vandemerwa to lead the relocation.

Matt Loehrer (29:13)
Yes. So another little piece of research ⁓ in South Africa, the last name Vandewoorwa or however it's pronounced because it's probably not right. But it's a Dutch name, right? They're all that's a Dutch settlement. So ⁓ apparently it's a fairly common last name. Remember the Johnsons in ⁓ in Blazing Saddles? They were all Johnsons. ⁓ So this is a very common common last name and would be recognizable to most South Africans as a common name in a

Tug McTighe (29:20)
how it's tough.

Yes, these are, yeah.

Yes, they were all John named Johnson. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (29:42)
genre of jokes about a stupid, bumbling, or incompetent Afrikaner. ⁓ Which makes sense.

Tug McTighe (29:48)
Okay, so this,

so this is an inside joke. Yeah, okay.

Matt Loehrer (29:53)
It is.

So from the name itself, it's telling you, kind of the way, you know, Harry Potter, you mentioned that earlier. You know, the names, the way the names were chosen. When you hear that name, you draw something, you draw inference about what that person's like.

Tug McTighe (30:04)
Yes. Yeah, yeah,

it's giving you some character, it's providing some ⁓ character development, the name.

Matt Loehrer (30:13)
For sure. But I will say this reminds me in a kind of a bumbling way to did you see Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise? Yeah, it was. Yeah, that could be anything, but really cool movie. And it reminds me of his character in you in that when you meet him, you don't like him and he's kind of a jackass and he develops and how you feel about him changes over the course of

Tug McTighe (30:19)
Yeah, a great movie with a terrible name.

His,

yeah, his arc makes you, makes you, he grows and you go to like him.

Matt Loehrer (30:40)
Yeah, that's one of the things I like best about this movie is his character development growth.

Tug McTighe (30:43)
For sure. So

there's a lot happening in all this found footage. You get that the aliens have come, they're stranded and there's a lot of, again, a lot of apartheid civil rights, whites only allegory via imagery on signs, commentary about aliens, about where they should be or shouldn't be, general unrest between humans and prawns. And then they, you know, when they start evicting the aliens, all hell breaks loose. I really like the...

illustrative signs that have the prawn, no prawn or prawn area. You know, there's a lot of that that they show. you know, and they're, as they're evicting the aliens, they start shooting. I'm like, they're shooting tear gas. No, they're just throwing cans of cat food at them. Cause they love cat food. You learn. ⁓ and again, it's, doesn't take too long, right? Trope alert. Hey, they've got really good guns and we need those guns.

Matt Loehrer (31:27)
They love cat food.

Tug McTighe (31:38)
which is such a alien sci-fi standard standard plot line. But like dreads gun humans can't fire them because they're DNA coded. So that's going to give you your first. ⁓ something's got to happen.

Matt Loehrer (31:59)
So meanwhile, three aliens named Christopher Johnson, which I don't think is his actual name. think that's the humans calling that. His young son CJ and his friend Paul are searching a district nine garbage dump for prawn technology because Christopher has been spending the last two decades synthesizing fuel to power their ship. Their ship is stranded in hovering, but ⁓ unable to function because it doesn't have any fuel.

Tug McTighe (32:04)
I don't think so.

Correct, it stalled. That's right.

Yeah, you earlier

you see in one of the interviews you see a piece of a big wide shot of it you see a piece falling from the ship into District 9 and And and the people on the TV like well, nobody knows what that is Some suspected sis some suspected sat so we'll find out what it is

Matt Loehrer (32:38)
We'll out later.

Yeah, so my question to you is does alien fuel qualify as a MacGuffin?

Tug McTighe (32:47)
212%. So again, it's just a it's just a we've got to get the box. We need the box. What's the box? It's a canister of fuel and he's trying to find this fluid. For 20 years, he's trying to find this fluid.

Matt Loehrer (32:49)
Okay.

Right. So this is what we're chasing.

Sure, which so they fill a container of it, which isn't a huge container either. So it must be pretty potent.

Tug McTighe (33:09)
No, it's probably.

It's like a cut. Yeah, it's like a water glass full. It's 12, 12 ounces.

Matt Loehrer (33:14)
Right. So as,

right. So as they find this, Vickus is serving notices to tell these people they need to evacuate their shacks to move into newer or shacks or older ones. he finds this container and accidentally sprays fuel into his face. Vickus gets, okay.

Tug McTighe (33:23)
Right.

which actually I knew it was coming because

I seen the movie, but that gave me a jump scare. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (33:37)
Okay, so he

finds his fuel. This is important. Sprays him in his face.

Tug McTighe (33:42)
I thought a lot of this was really effective. Um, Vickus is surprised when he sees in Christopher shack. goes, well, we haven't seen this before. This is, this looks like some kind of a chemistry setup because he's doing Christopher's making something And, and, uh, he says he's never seen anything like this before. And when he gets spritzed with the fluid, it's pretty scary as we all know that they, and they have shown like

the drops of the fluid go into the pool of it, it does a sort of a living, you know, like the like the alien suit, the simi it in venom. It sort of looks like that. ⁓ so you know, this is not of earth.

Matt Loehrer (34:27)
Sure. So Kubis Venter, who is there just to be evil, ⁓ kills Paul. ⁓ Paul kind of went nuts and was smacking everybody around. He did. Yeah, yeah, he kills Paul. It's worth noting all the shacks that they used in this movie were actually shacks used to house people in Johannesburg. So it was a real deal. But I, I do want to talk about the alien

Tug McTighe (34:32)
Yes. Correct.

Yeah, Paul lost his shit ⁓

great. Yeah, even better.

Matt Loehrer (34:55)
uh, fuel turns. Do you want to discuss it now or you want to wait? Okay. It's the entire movie hinges on him. Why would, why would fuel, if I sprayed fuel on you, it would not transform you into something. It would, just get fuel on you.

Tug McTighe (34:56)
fluid. I do too.

Let's go.

It doesn't make any fucking sense.

I do.

I know I

yeah, yeah, I I don't know why either and because because because because McGuffin right I had the same thought I'm like wait Why does gasoline? Turn him into an alien and then why does Christopher say I can fix it because Christopher clearly knew that that would happen it seems

Matt Loehrer (35:17)
Because it had to be, because there had to be a way to transform him into an alien, because that's the movie. Right.

Tug McTighe (35:38)
but I can fix it if I get back to my chip. again, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (35:38)
I guess. And also if

they've got the fuel and they've got can't they just spray other people with it? Why do they need this one guy? I don't know.

Tug McTighe (35:47)
Right,

right. to, yeah. Yeah, impossible. It's a big plot. It's a big plot hole, for sure.

Matt Loehrer (35:53)
It was, this was the biggest, yes, it's the biggest

problem I had because it's one guy, the only guy in the planet that apparently is affected and everybody's going after that one guy. But if you accept that, then the rest of the movie, you'll be fine. That's a good point. All right.

Tug McTighe (36:04)
Right, right.

Well, you have to or none of it makes any sense. Yeah. So he begins me.

So Vickers begins mutating into a into a prawn, starting with his left arm that was injured after the exposure. And I'm like, wow, what an ill timed congratulations party when he goes home and he pukes all over the cake. And and then I did think this was a really interesting symbol, a piece of symbolism when they take him when the MNU people take him away to the lab, they literally put him in a body bag.

And so this is a symbol, symbol of he's dying. His human form is dying and he's going to be reborn into something else. ⁓ that's correct. So, so he becomes mutating into a prawn. again, like we said with dread, there's some kind of genetic lock on these weapons, which of course the just cartoonishly evil MNU, they have him strapped into this chair and they put his

Matt Loehrer (36:44)
Yeah, when he comes out, he's something different. That's interesting.

Tug McTighe (37:03)
alien arm. and it's of note. They keep bringing on the screen 12 hours after exposure, 24 hours after. So he's really rapidly deteriorating. And so they make him shoot these weapons and the first they're shooting a pig carcass and then something else. And then for the love of Christ, they just bring a fucking alien in a live prawn and make him stand there. And he's like, he has an X on him. And you're like, Jesus. So if you were wondering if if you're wondering if and U was bad,

Matt Loehrer (37:27)
Right. And they're a, yeah.

Tug McTighe (37:33)
They are. Spoiler alert, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (37:35)
cartoonishly so. were bond.

was bond, bond villain level evil. and there was, to that point, there was no reason for him to have to murder a prawn, except they just wanted him to cause they're, cause they're

Tug McTighe (37:47)
Yeah. And they remember

they were giving him zaps with the cattle prod. They were giving him to Vic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (37:52)
yeah, so he was involuntarily contracting his finger.

Yeah, that was just terrible. So anyway, I hated those people. ⁓ But.

Tug McTighe (37:59)
All right, well, speaking

of, speaking of people to hate, let's talk about somebody you'll love and that's Little Bear Graphics, our title sponsor here at Cinemass. When the aliens landed in district nine, they didn't get the warmest welcome. Maybe it's because their branding sucked. If only they'd called Little Bear Graphics, the small but mighty creative studio that helps brands feel less like you're on the outside looking in and more like you belong. From t-shirts to logos to websites that don't look like they're made in a spaceship cargo bay or a shantytown.

your business will take off. Whether you're a business, a prawn or a terrible, awful member of the MNU team, Little Bear can help. Check out Matt's work, littlebear.graphics today. So they just needed better. They just needed better branding. Okay, so they're in the lab, right? He's shooting. They've proved that Vickers can shoot the guns. Again, it's got to be the guns. And I just want to give you an exposition alert.

Matt Loehrer (38:40)
That was great. I would not help those people.

Tug McTighe (38:57)
the doctor just comes out and says, he's turning into a prawn and there isn't much time to do whatever dastardly deeds we need to do to him. Not sure how he knows all this, but he does wink, wink. So he says, we got to harvest this guy's organs. We need the heart. We got to cut them up and they're, they, got to cut him open alive. So it just doesn't, again, it doesn't make much sense. And then what else doesn't make sense is that

Matt Loehrer (39:16)
Yeah.

Tug McTighe (39:21)
A guy who was strapped to a gurney two minutes ago suddenly breaks free. He mows down the overpowers of lab personnel and escapes. Vickus does. So then Smith orders Kubis in. He's the big boss of the bad guys. and then this was really terrible. And also I want to talk about a connection to modern day. well, while Kubis's forces are hunting Vickus instead, he goes to hide in district nine.

A fake news story is broadcast that he is a wanted fugitive because he's contracted a contagious disease because he's been copulating with aliens and they even have a mocked up. Yeah, they have a mocked up photo. So this was 2009. This fake news rings truer. Now this AI, you know, stories that are created conspiracy theories. Man, we're dealing with this so much more now than we were then.

Matt Loehrer (39:56)
You show it, right?

Tug McTighe (40:14)
And that really struck me with the doctored footage, right? And the, and the made up media reports. And, it just, was really sort of, sort of foretelling of the future we're living in now. And this was back in 2009.

Matt Loehrer (40:26)
Correct. His entire escape from the lab, I'm with you, that was, he killed a bunch of people. He had one guy held at knife point, like a scalpel at his neck. And there was a, like a cop or a security guard who had a gun. He's like, okay, okay, I'm not gonna, you know, don't hurt him. And then he just runs out the door and upstairs and he's on the street and he's gone. Like they were right behind you, man.

Tug McTighe (40:36)
Yes, Cal, Paul,

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. There

I have and there's like a thousand of them this building. I, I, as I, you know, read and watch and consume this kind of content, I'm, I have little patience for the continuing. A our hero is captured. Then they escape. Then they're captured again. Then they, I'm just like, just cut, just get to the point. And again, a little bit, a little bit.

Matt Loehrer (40:53)
Great.

Tug McTighe (41:17)
outside of the, you know, tone break takes you outside the film. So he gives, ⁓ he gives a Tanya call and the, the cell phones and the answer, you know, you hear their answering machine again. So it's only 15 years ago or whatever, but there were still answering machines and really weird cell phones. And then you see him looking in a mirror and this is when his teeth start falling out. And man, I, like I said, at at the jump, I just hate that teeth falling out. and I had forgotten, like I said, that there was a,

There's a lot of David Cronenberg esque body, body horror where he's transforming into a prawn. It reminded me so much of Jeff Goldblum in the fly turning into the fly. and again, this kind of body horror is, is like a train wreck for me. I'm terrified of it and, and, and horrified, but I cannot look away. ⁓ yeah. And I will go out, you know, the new, ⁓ DCU the next movie is clay face and that's supposed to be about

Matt Loehrer (42:05)
I love it.

Tug McTighe (42:13)
sort of a body horror, this person turning into Clayface, which I think that'll be cool. ⁓ So Tanya calls him, she's believed all the stories, MMU has spread. This is really the saddest part of the story that she's like, don't know what to believe. like, no, I'm not, none of that is true. Your father's lying. And again, by my clock, that was the midpoint where this is his false loss or his false win, right? Not all his loss yet, but damn close. yes, I wrote.

Matt Loehrer (42:20)
I think it will too.

Tug McTighe (42:39)
All this before he cut off his own fucking finger with the ax. He stole from that. A GERIAN meat man. Good gravy. Horrible. ⁓ Yeah. So he's in district nine. He finds Christopher again and CJ. And then he realizes that Christopher has this the ship. The thing that fell from the from the mothership is underneath the ground, underneath all this junk. And Christopher's been trying to bring it back to life.

Matt Loehrer (42:47)
Yeah, I don't like that.

Tug McTighe (43:07)
⁓ and so he, he, Vickus goes to see him and another, another quick tone break. He speaks alien language.

Matt Loehrer (43:19)
Yeah, I guess if you're willing to believe that this fuel is transforming him into an alien, then I'm willing to go along with idea that that means that he can understand their language. I'll buy it. The language, by the way, the alien language was achieved by rubbing on a pumpkin.

Tug McTighe (43:29)
Okay, that did not occur to me. will take it. ⁓ Yeah, because it's

Okay. Okay. Then they affected it in. Okay.

Matt Loehrer (43:42)
kind of a boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And I think they made, took that, I don't know.

It was such an odd piece of trivia, but then they just kind of digitized it and overlapped it.

Tug McTighe (43:50)
Um, so Christopher

tells him what they're trying to do. Um, we, this is when we get all the details. We're going to fly the drop ship up to the mothership and fly away. And then I, this is really where I was struck Matt by the fluid problem. Why did the fluid, the fuel possess the power to transform a human into a prawn? Why would that be necessary? And again, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but we just got to run with it. So, um,

Matt Loehrer (44:18)
It made me wonder if all prawns are just transformed creatures from other races, other species.

Tug McTighe (44:18)
So there we are.

other races, sorry, other species, other species,

right? Don't know. ⁓ Okay. So Christopher explains that the confiscated fuels needed to reactivate the drop ship, which can then dock with the mothership, bloody, hootie, har. Again, Christopher can rescue his people and go home. And then he, so he says, I can cure Wicus with the equipment on board. And then Tanya gives him a call at the behest of her father. Kubas and father were listening in.

Matt Loehrer (44:28)
I

Tug McTighe (44:49)
But they don't, okay, this was weird too. They call, they have Tanya call Vickus and then during the call they go, you got him? Yeah, the location is 310-5. Great, but then they don't go.

⁓ cause we have the whole Nigerian scene before we see that Kubis and Smitter taking a team to go get, get Vickus. So there's there's some, just some pacing problems here throughout. again, Vickus steals all these powerful aliens from Obasanjo, the Nigerian crime lord who believes eating Wicks' alien arm will grant him alien abilities.

Matt Loehrer (45:27)
Yeah, the actor who played him, I thought this was hilarious. said, it's a story, this is a quote. It's a story you know, it's not like Nigerians do eat aliens. Aliens don't exist in the first place. Like, we don't eat aliens, wink, wink. I thought that was funny. Just say you don't eat anybody. Come on, man.

Tug McTighe (45:37)
Right, right. He's like, it's a movie.

Right. Wink, wink.

Yeah. Okay. So

we were getting into real third act problems coming up. So, Vickus and Christopher get these weapons and the two of them just storm the fucking headquarters of the giant corporation says, I know where the fluid is.

So they just, the two of them...

Just go in, make it to the lab in two minutes, have a big fight, and find the stuff. And then they get out. And I didn't like it. And I didn't like it. Yeah. Yes. yeah, Yeah, he sees all these experiments and he's horrified. And this is...

Matt Loehrer (46:28)
Yeah, they find the fuel. Got it.

Well, then it was the thing where Christopher sees what they're doing to his people and they're experimenting and hacking them up and.

Tug McTighe (46:43)
really sad. Christopher decides, so they get back to the District 9, Christopher decides, can't deal with you. I got to get my people out of here. They're being tortured. So it'll take more time for me to cure your condition. And then Wicus hits Christopher in the head, knocks him out and tries to fly the mothership.

But ventner shoots it down and then ventner captures vicus and christopher but then obis a lot of shit's happening obison joe's gang ambushes them and abduct wicus and this is the all is lost act act three moment or end of act two where vicus is caught by the nigerians christopher is caught by mmu and cj the little kid is just alone he was hiding in the ship um so he's alone so a lot of a lot of again as we say a lot to unpack

So why don't you unpack some of it for me.

Matt Loehrer (47:32)
Yeah, there was this was confusing to me. But, ⁓ all right. So CJ's in the drop ship. He remotely activates the mothership and this alien Gundam like battle suit. You called it a Gundam. Yeah. So he remotely uses that to gun down the Nigerians and then Vickus and it gets inside the suit.

Tug McTighe (47:46)
Yes, Robo Tech.

Correct. Because I'm sorry, because the Nigerians

have been amassing this giant cache of alien tech, including the including the Robotech.

Matt Loehrer (48:00)
Right.

Yes. So ⁓ conveniently that's there, which is pretty cool. I'm never going to complain about a, you know, a mech suit exoskeleton. I think they're cool.

Tug McTighe (48:10)
Right. And it's really

cool in a minute, but I did say I did say to myself, all right, what is this Gundam? Now? What is this Robo tech? go, we've had aliens. We've had a mothership. We've had apartheid allegories. Now we got a battle robots. Okay. Carry on.

Matt Loehrer (48:17)
Right.

But yeah, it too, as you pointed out, the face of the robot looks like a prawn, which is kind of cool. Like it should.

Tug McTighe (48:30)
Yeah, it Yeah,

if they built it, would look. Yeah, it would look like they built it. That's correct.

Matt Loehrer (48:33)
Yeah, the way if we did and had a face on it, it would look like a human

face. So, so now he gets out and ⁓ Vickus is in the suit and he encounters Venter and Venter's like, yeah, go run away coward. And he does. So what are you doing, man? Yeah. And Christopher is right there. Like they're going to shoot. They're going to shoot Christopher. He's like, we should just kill this monster right now. But of course he came back.

Tug McTighe (48:40)
Ahem.

Yeah, why would you run? You're in a fucking tank. Yeah.

Yes, yes.

Matt Loehrer (48:57)
Just as the guy's about to shoot Christopher, he uses this awesome laser beam and just like blows the guy's arm off, which was really.

Tug McTighe (49:05)
Yeah, and there's a lot of really good dying in this movie and blood and brains often splatter the camera.

Matt Loehrer (49:14)
Yes, a lot of exploding, exploding bodies, exploding heads.

Tug McTighe (49:15)
Which is, yeah, like, like, like,

like not just killing, but just disintegrating bodies. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (49:22)
Right. So they're heading to the drop ship. Vickus is like, come on, follow me. Come on. And Christopher, to his credit, has some kind of piece of metal that's deflecting bullets.

Tug McTighe (49:29)
He picks up a piece of metal,

but baby, there's no way they make it out of that firing zone. Yeah. lot of storm troopers missing. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (49:34)
Now there's a lot of stormtrooper quality shooting.

He managed to dodge all the bullets. Vicka says, you know, I'm going to stay behind. You know, think of your son, you and CJ get on that drop ship and head out and Christopher says, OK.

Tug McTighe (49:45)
Yeah. He has a great line. says,

he says, make all this shit I'm doing fucking worth it. Right. To I can. Yeah. So so there is some really cool fighting here. The alien robot suit is really cool. It acts because it's taking heavy fire, too. And you can see it's bleeding like oil is dripping out of it. Like it falls over one time and it looks like looks like blood. It's oil or fluid.

Matt Loehrer (49:53)
Yeah. Yeah. And Christopher says, I'll be back in three years.

Tug McTighe (50:14)
coming out of the mouth of it. So I just thought all the all those details really communicated lots of good stuff. And then finally, they yeah, yeah, he gets rear ended right, but this goes on a while. They probably could have cut a minute or two out of this. Finally, Kubas cripples the suit and it's all down to mono E Prano Vicus and and Kubas.

Matt Loehrer (50:21)
a car comes and crashes into him from behind and he takes him out.

Yeah, that's pretty long.

Tug McTighe (50:39)
And then Vickus is out of the suit. He's incapacitated. The suit is broken down and he's about to be shot in the head by, by Kubas. But then five or 10 prawns come out of the woodwork and within 10 seconds, they just decapitate and dismember Kubas's body because they're trying to help Vickus.

Matt Loehrer (51:00)
yeah, they rip, they rip his head off his body. I don't know how they got captured in the first place. Like they have awesome tech and they're super strong. Crazy. So yeah, he's, he's dead. So that was good. ⁓

Tug McTighe (51:03)
In one second. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right.

That was a great

death for that jerk.

Matt Loehrer (51:16)
Yeah, and the Vickus just disappears. Then we go back to some exposition via interviews and news and that sort of thing. So the experiment, MNU has been exposed. Their experiments have been exposed to public.

Tug McTighe (51:22)
some of the interviews like newscast, yeah.

Yeah, they have a whistle. There's a

guy that was Vickers' friend is a whistleblower.

Matt Loehrer (51:33)
Right, so the aliens are going to be moved to a new camp called District 10, which I'm sure is going to be much better. Problem solved. And.

Tug McTighe (51:39)
So great, yeah, yeah. Problem solves. And

then Christopher gets back to the drop ship. He turns it on, and by the way, we didn't talk about this. Lots of cool heads up displays, like three dimensional menus, sorta like Iron Man's, that Christopher's using, yeah, Christopher's using to drive the ship. And then you see that tractor beam. The ship is now moving.

Matt Loehrer (51:55)
Yeah, I totally skipped that part. Yeah, he got back to the ship.

Tug McTighe (52:05)
to the dropships locate the mothership is now moving slowly to the dropships locations. There's a little bit of a ticking clock, but then he gets up Christopher and CJ get up to the ship. He turns it on and he gets the engines going and then they fly away leaving earth. Like you said, Christopher said, I'll be back in three years to help you. And then Vickus disappears. All this stuff is exposed to the public from MNU and then Tanya finds this metal

like upcycled flour made out of tin cans and stuff. And she says, my girlfriend thinks I should throw it away. It's just rubbish. But I think he made it. I think Vickus made it for me.

Matt Loehrer (52:47)
Did he make them earlier in the movie? Is that his hobby?

Tug McTighe (52:50)
She

says a couple times, he's always making stuff for me. she says, he made me this, it looks like it's a little basket. She goes, but I accidentally sat on it and squished it because I didn't see it, but I kept it even though it was broken. So there's a little bit of a callback to him making stuff.

Matt Loehrer (53:03)
Right.

So what did you think of the ending?

Tug McTighe (53:10)
Yeah, I like that MNU's gonna get fucked, because they're shitheads. I like that Christopher got away. I think he's gonna come back and try to save his people. ⁓ Him and CJ, they left everybody behind. Again, I don't know what they, they left their planet, because it was dying. Where's he going? Correct.

Matt Loehrer (53:20)
Yeah, did he leave everybody behind? it just him and-

Yeah, so we don't even know where he's going, right?

Tug McTighe (53:35)
So, ⁓

Matt Loehrer (53:35)
OK.

Tug McTighe (53:36)
and then we see Vicus fully transformed into a prawn now making another one of those flowers. Yeah. So I'd like.

Matt Loehrer (53:43)
because that happens. One day you're

messing around with fuel, the next you're a prawn.

Tug McTighe (53:48)
And by the way, it's only like 72 hours later.

Matt Loehrer (53:52)
It was pretty fast. You're right.

Tug McTighe (53:53)
Cause they, yeah,

yeah. So I did like the framing device of the newscasters and the historians. Like it looks like it's a documentary where they're interviewing experts on this event. He says, we don't know where Vickus is. There's all kinds of conspiracy theories that they're going to come back. Christopher's going to come back to attack us. He's going to come back to free his people, et cetera, et cetera. No one knows what happened to Vickus.

people think he's alive. He's kind of a cult hero now this and that and the third thing. And then again, it reminded me a lot of what's gone on right with the, these, the podcast overs and the blogosphere with the conspiracy theories that people are just saying whatever they want to say and people might believe it. And so I thought again, that was sort of foreshadowing where we were living now, you know, 15 years ago.

What did you think of the ending?

Matt Loehrer (54:51)
⁓ I thought it went on a little long. But I thought it was satisfying at least to give you some closure. Like, he is still alive. I mean, you don't have to wonder what happened to him. I mean, he does he deserves after all he's been through. He deserves that we know what happened to him. So that's good.

Tug McTighe (54:54)
Go ahead.

Right.

Yeah, they show him.

That's right. Yeah. So I liked it too.

So speaking of stuff I like, I like little bear.

I'm really these segues are really getting good. ⁓ In District 9, Vickus was accidentally transformed into something totally new. Good thing you don't need a mysterious alien flu to change your identity or marketing materials. Just connect a little bit of graphics. Matt and his team specializes in thoughtful, sharp design for things like logos, t-shirts, websites and whole brand systems. His concepts and work will evolve your business without any side effects like turning into a giant crustacean. No government quarantine, no body horror.

Matt Loehrer (55:15)
Me too.

Seamless.

Tug McTighe (55:44)
just great creative. Check out his stuff at littlebear.graphics today.

Matt Loehrer (55:50)
Very nice. I love those. OK, I had some thoughts. We'll see if you like my thoughts or not. The aliens design in my research I found went through a number of iterations. And at one point they were these huge hulking things in suits, which they decided later to make them more humanoid and goes all CGI like they were going to be practical. And at another point, they walked on all fours like animals.

Tug McTighe (55:51)
All right, closing thoughts.

Okay. Okay.

They, there's a couple times they show them sort of scampering, like scampering, but then they stand up. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (56:18)
And they.

Right. But they

stand up. They finally settled on that bipedal design. And I think that was smart. They look like us, but they don't. They're arguably, in my opinion, visually repellent. They're not attractive. I would not say they're attractive. ⁓ But at the same time, they speak a language. They wear clothes. They do things that people do, even though they look like aliens. So it drives home pretty well the point that...

Tug McTighe (56:37)
No. Nope.

Matt Loehrer (56:49)
It's easy to rationalize ways to dehumanize groups that we don't like. And we've seen it before, and some could argue that we're seeing it right now.

Tug McTighe (56:56)
Yes, we are seeing it, right? The fear of the other.

Matt Loehrer (57:00)
Yeah, and it's easy to stoke that fear for crappy reasons like making money or gaining influence or doing whatever a lot of terrible people and then you type people do.

Tug McTighe (57:08)
Right, right.

Right. Whatever a multi right.

Multi billionaire billion, you know, dollar corporation just wants to make more profit. ⁓

Matt Loehrer (57:19)
Okay, the more we talk

about it, the more I like the movie, but I didn't love it. Love it. ⁓ I get what he was trying to do. And I know he grew up in apartheid and wanted to get this story out. And I totally respect that. Third act, I think you'll agree, it devolved into kind of standard action movie stuff.

Tug McTighe (57:24)
Yeah, yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Yeah,

and it just was too much. It didn't have enough focus, I don't think.

Matt Loehrer (57:42)
Yeah, too much of that to take seriously, but too seriously to be fun. And for this kind of movie for sci-fi, man, I want a fun movie. ⁓ So I don't think it was, yeah, we talked about the whole alien fuel conveniently turned our guy into an alien. I don't think so. So I don't, I personally don't, this is uncharitable perhaps. I don't think it was as good as people claim to think it was. And I,

Tug McTighe (57:48)
Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (58:10)
kind of cynically think some people will claim to like a movie more than they actually do because they like the message. So they'll, you know, we have, there's a movie.

Tug McTighe (58:18)
Sure, You'll

put aside some of your criticisms to go, because I like it too. I like the allegory, right? I like that. Yep.

Matt Loehrer (58:24)
Yeah.

I like what they're saying. not going to be

the guy that's like, no, I love apartheid. I hated this movie. ⁓

Tug McTighe (58:33)
No, ⁓ Sinemises,

by the way, is officially rejecting of apartheid. That's our official stance. Yes.

Matt Loehrer (58:39)
Yes, ⁓ 100%.

It's a sort of and I think about like Nazis in movies. I always like seeing Nazis get, you know, the piss taken out of them because they're terrible and they deserve it. ⁓ Yeah, so I think it's fair to say that I like and approve the message. That doesn't mean that it was my favorite movie in the world, because there were things that just didn't work for me. and I had another question for you. What do ET the aliens from Close Encounters?

Tug McTighe (58:46)
Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's what you need. Yeah, that's right. These are everything they get.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (59:06)
the aliens from Independence Day and the aliens from science all have in common that these aliens do not.

Tug McTighe (59:16)
Opposable thumbs? Pants!

Matt Loehrer (59:18)
No, pants. These guys wear clothes.

It drives me nuts. It's like ET. Yeah, I'm gonna just beam down. I'm gonna go down this planet and just walk around. And hopefully nobody chases me because I move at like snail's pace. But okay, you're gonna put some clothes on? No, I'm good.

Tug McTighe (59:33)
No, we don't

wear any- no, then none of them wore clothes!

Matt Loehrer (59:36)
We're just naked. Like, I hope you don't have a wallet. I hope you don't need to carry a pack of gum.

Tug McTighe (59:40)
All of these aliens are unclothed.

Matt Loehrer (59:43)
They're all naked and it drives me nuts. So I will give Neil Blomkamp credit for this movie because he put clothes on his alien.

Tug McTighe (59:45)
Ha!

At least there's some clothes on them. I like it very good. So I'm in a similar, similar boat as you here. I liked it upon this viewing. I did feel pretty clearly that it was a special effects guy making this movie because he put a lot of his shit in a lot of his special effects in the movie. sometimes I think at the expense of like we were saying in the third act at the expense of it being clear narrative, the store driving the story forward.

We got to see another scene of cool shit because he could make it. But again, the special effects throughout are fantastic, especially for the budget. It does fall apart in the third act for me. And like I said, I wrote to you kind of like eating cotton candy. Looks good. Tastes pretty good. But then once you it just disappears in your mouth and you're left with nothing. But I do love the message. I like I like.

using fantasy to tell stories about the real world. Right. Because all fantasy and sci fi is about power. Who has the power, who wants the power, who doesn't have the power. And that's clearly what this is as well. So I. You do, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (1:00:58)
But I think you have to care about characters, too.

So it can't be about nothing. It can't be the Seinfeld of Seinfeld of sci-fi movies.

Tug McTighe (1:01:03)
No, it can't be the Seinfeld.

The Seinfeld of movies. All right, a Cinahit or Cinemass? Mild Cinahit? Light? Cinahit light?

Matt Loehrer (1:01:10)
Yeah, I'm not gonna hit. would.

I would say if you're if you're saying I want just a fun movie to watch, I wouldn't watch it. I wouldn't recommend this one. ⁓ No, and I do love a fun movie, but I don't know that this was intended to be fun. ⁓

Tug McTighe (1:01:19)
Yeah, no, it's not that fun.

I don't think so either. Now, again, if

you want a fun movie, mentioned one earlier. If you want a fun sci fi. They're not similar, Matt, but, know, a sort of alien invasion like edge of tomorrow is a great movie. It's it's a time loop. Tom Cruise learns everything. They got to fight the alien invasion. They got to figure out how to kill him. It's a bit of a mystery. It's a bit of a heist. Yeah, it's fun. And it's just got terrible name.

Matt Loehrer (1:01:40)
It really was.

It was.

It was terrible. I'll say this to you, reminding me of something. And, know, I'm a Star Trek nerd and there have been so many. Star Trek shows, different shows and spin offs, and you've got. The original series and Next Generation and ⁓ DSpace nine and Voyager and the new ones, you know, you got all these and a lot of great

Tug McTighe (1:02:07)
Deep Space Nine Voyager and right.

Matt Loehrer (1:02:12)
ideas, a lot of great stories. So it's kind of ruined me for a lot of.

you know, movies that other people could enjoy. Even Edge of Tomorrow, as much as I liked it, there was a Star Trek episode that did it really well in 45 minutes.

Tug McTighe (1:02:21)
You, you, you-

Okay, so

really important. It's really important to talk about Star Trek in this regard, because that was what Rodden that was Roddenberry's express purpose was taking on real life issues and problems that he saw in the real world and foreseeing a future where we were. It wasn't well, I guess it's utopia close to utopia, but where we were.

using science fiction to tackle these issues, right? The black and white faced aliens where it's one's ones. Well, don't you see they're black with white side and we're white with a black side. Yes, it was Frank that the Riddler. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (1:02:59)
sure.

That was Frank Gorshin. Did you know that? The Riddler. ⁓

Yeah, that's it's it's if you make.

Tug McTighe (1:03:10)
But yes, Star Trek has done

so much of that. You're like, I already saw that in episode 81.

Matt Loehrer (1:03:14)
Yeah, we talked about the idea of a species that rewrite your DNA and transforms you into that species that was done on episode of Voyager. ⁓ So. It's it's all been done. It's if you make the mistake of being on social media or Twitter or something, you'll you will hear lots of. Supposed to Star Trek fancied. Why is it also woke now? You know, why are they? Why are they bringing politics into it? I'm like, dude, it was always in there. That's what it that's what it's about.

Tug McTighe (1:03:23)
Right.

Where have you been? Where have you been? Jesus

Christ. OK, hey, everybody, thank you again for listening to Cinemissas. If you like what we're doing here, for starters, thank you for liking it. But please help us grow the show by subscribing, sharing, writing review, liking, all that stuff. It really does help. And even better, tell someone you think might like it to go ahead and listen to it.

Matt Loehrer (1:03:42)
crazy

Tug McTighe (1:04:00)
And we do want to hear from you. So follow and comment on socials and please drop us a line at cinemasys at gmail.com with ideas to make the show better and recos for movies we may want to cover.

Okay, Matt, what is our next cinemass and what does our cinemisser, who is you, think? What do you think you know about this movie we're gonna do?

Matt Loehrer (1:04:22)
Okay, I think we should do Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Which I believe. Is a Quentin Tarantino jam.

Tug McTighe (1:04:25)
Love it.

It is a Jack Tarantino jam.

Matt Loehrer (1:04:33)
I'm fairly certain Brad Pitt is involved, if not the lead. said maybe it's about him. ⁓

Tug McTighe (1:04:38)
involved.

He's a boom.

He's a boom operator in this one.

Matt Loehrer (1:04:44)
I think he's maybe a stunt man. And that's it. That's all I got. have heard it said that it's among his very best movies.

Tug McTighe (1:04:46)
Yep. Okay.

I

really like it, I've seen it several times. It's gonna, I'm glad we've done a couple 82 minute movies, the 93 minute movies, because this is not 93 minutes. This is a, you're gonna probably watch this, this is a two-parter, this is a three hour jam. So.

Matt Loehrer (1:05:05)
Well, he kind

of fell off my radar at one point. You know, I saw Pulp Fiction in theaters during college and it was awesome. And then I just missed almost everything else. And then not too long ago, I watched I was like, I should watch Django Unchained. I was like, holy cow, this guy's awesome. What a great what a great movie maker.

Tug McTighe (1:05:10)
Sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

Let me give. So Sean and Nick have been making their way through. I've given them a giant list of movies and they've been there. I think they're pretty much caught up on Tarantino, but when Sean goes, is now this has become a McTighe family inside joke. When, Sean, when he said, Hey dad, I'm going to watch Django and chain next. What do you think? And I go, it's a bit of a tough go.

Matt Loehrer (1:05:45)
You

Tug McTighe (1:05:46)
And so

now whenever someone says, hey dad, Django and change, tough go, it's tough go, but great movie. Yeah, well, let's watch Hollywood. I really liked this movie. I think you'll like it too. So we'll do that next. All right, my friend. Another cinema is in the can. How about it? All right, I'm tug. That's a wrap.

Matt Loehrer (1:05:52)
my interest in Tarantino.

Yes, I'm Matt. See you next time.